January 10, 2012

This winter has been amazingly mild and not much rain in comparison to past winters so the kids were bursting to go outside and play with water (one of their favorite activities). It was still a tad cold so I decided to make a mini potions lab using some warm water, different containers and food coloring.

The spray bottles were something relatively new to them so of course they went for those first. Kaitlyn sprayed the water into the empty container and we compared the sound it made hitting the empty container vs when it started to fill up and was hitting water.

That was too slow for both kids so I uncapped the rest of the containers and let them start mixing things up. I had a recycled Nesquik milk bottle, an empty olive oil plastic bottle, a plastic Snapple drink bottle, a condiment bottle and then gave them a couple funnels, a colander, mixing bowl and plastic eye droppers that my brother and his wife gave Kaitlyn for Christmas. Both kids quickly got into the spirit of mixing the colors together and I found it funny that Michael kept insisting on trying to put the top of the eye dropper into the water instead of the tip. Every once in awhile he would squeeze it just right that a jet of water would shoot out and spray someone without him even realizing it.

Kaitlyn initially started off mixing the colors slowly to see how the color would change but eventually it just turned into how fast could she start transferring water from one container to another.

The condiment bottle was another favorite as Kaitlyn found if she squeezed it really hard the water would shoot out really fast.

As always happens all the water ends up mixed together in one container and we were wrapping up the play when Kaitlyn begged to do the volcano experiment again. Since daddy missed out the last time we did it she called him over and showed him how it worked.

Then the kids got a few more splashes in and off to the bath tub they went since the volcano experiment called for vinegar and both kids had hands that reeked of it.